We, the undersigned

One of my friends from the Buffalo, NY area sent me a petition to sign this morning. It's a request that the ABC show Extreme Makeover Home Edition rebuild a home for the family who lost theirs in the Continental plane crash. Here's the petition if you'd like to sign. I am signature 127,725. The show's producer is aware of the request and says he's considering it. Something else struck me about this.

I think the original petition might've started on Facebook, but the link I gave you is to a site called petitiononline.com. I guess it's been around for some time, but I'd never run across it before. The home makeover request for the Wielinski family is the most popular petition on the site, but there are hundreds of petitions about everything imaginable.

High gas prices need to stop says one petition written to "US gas providers." Only 363 people have signed that one. Maybe it's the misspellings.

350 people want Nintendo to [change the name of the Wii](change the name of the Wii.) to practically anything but Wii.

There are political petitions, local petitions, personal petitions, impeachment petitions, hiring petitions, justice petitions, injustice petitions, petitions written in other languages... and much, much more.

I think it's cool. Some of it's obviously silly. Some of it futile. I doubt the CEO of Exxon has responded to the request for lower gas prices. But it gives people a sense of taking action, being involved, having a voice. There's nothing wrong with that.